Letters to My Agent

I was thinking of writing a bittersweet essay about being a writer in a time when writing is clearly headed in the same direction as barrel-making and broadsword sharpening. The piece would end bravely – rallying all writers to come up with a contingency plan, and offering to go first by enlisting in the TXDOT maintenance crew. (And this is no joke. As of today, I have an “in” with these people.) But then I hit upon a simpler career transition, one so fluid that it enabled me to stop writing the  essay and just get on with my life.

With my love of small museums and costumed interpreters, my course is clear — I will become a Robin Chotzinoff Re-enactor. Because of me, future generations won’t forget – not just what writers used to do all day, but what they produced. They’ll discover that we cranked out things like butter churns and F-16 fighter jets, using nothing but home-made  words! Now, I know there are lots of museums featuring famous writers – I myself visited Hemingway’s house in Cuba – as well as people who walk around acting like Walt Whitman and Gertrude Stein. The difference is that I’ll be representing what they call a “mid-list writer,” or, if you prefer, “the first type of writer to be thrown under the bus.”

I’m perfect for the part. For most of my 27-year career, I’ve been lower-lower-mid list, with some wild swings to the top – like that time I appeared on the same Barnes and Noble marquee as Clifford the Big Red Dog. It’s exactly this sort of life that will fade from memory if someone doesn’t do something, so that’s exactly what I’m doing right now! I’m totally in character, typing away at a desk in my home office, trying not to think about an offer of work so underpaid it makes me dizzy. Next, I’ll continue to avoid taking action by wandering into the kitchen to eat a spadeful of peanut butter, all the time wishing it were a Reuben sandwich. I may very well write a rhyming couplet about the dog’s disfigurement at the hands of cheap Petco clippers*. Then it’s back to the desk for more highs and lows of my seat-o-the-pants lifestyle!

My historically accurate costume includes reading glasses that list to one side, grimy cutoffs, bright green Rocket Dogs, one half of my head blowdried and probably some really original necklaces, but I’m too stiff from weightlifting to view my own neck.

When the next tour group arrives, I’ll tell them that writing, especially writing whatever comes into your head, isn’t actually all that difficult and would anyone like to give it a try? Sure enough, some brainiac 16-year-old will take over, continuing to text a mile a minute as he dashes off an email of divorce to the person who gave me that lousy assignment. The he’ll put in a call to the Food Network to talk over a TV-writing tie-in series that –

“What the hell are you doing, young man?” (I’ll scream.) “Lower-lower-mid-list writers are way too insecure to sell themselves! I would never call the Food Network unless I were drunk, and on the rare occasions I can stay awake long enough to get drunk, I pass the time by going to sleep. What you have just done is not authentic. Get off my desk chair!”

A 49-year-old female fiber artist will be next in line. I have a feeling she’ll know what to do.

This blog post sponsored by the National Historic Register, bailed out and back in bidness.

*”Electric clippers, poorly plied/A divot gouged in Jack’s backside.”